Press Release

ISPreview Study Finds People in the UK Only Keep a Phone Line for Home Broadband

The majority of respondents to a new online survey of UK internet users, which was conducted by ISPreview, have said that they would scrap their landline phone service if it wasn't still needed by most providers for home broadband.

London, United Kingdom, April 25, 2018 --(PR.com)-- Would you give up your fixed phone line service if it wasn't still needed for internet access? A new survey of 1,900 ISPreview.co.uk readers (conducted between 2nd March and 19th April 2018), which is a broadband focused consumer news and ISP comparison site for the United Kingdom, found that only 14.5% still use a landline phone service for making most of their calls and 67% would scrap it if the line wasn't still needed by most ISPs for internet access.

Which do you use for making most of your phone (voice) calls?

Mobile - 77%Landline Phone - 14.5%VoIP - 8.5%

Would you get rid of your fixed line phone service if it wasn't needed for broadband?

Yes - 67%Maybe - 13%No - 11%I already have! - 8%

ISPreview asked the same question ('which do you use most for making voice calls?') in 2013 and back then some 62% picked Mobile, followed by 30% for landline phone and just 6.6% chose VoIP. The results suggest that Mobile has continued to grow in popularity, while desire for landline phone services has declined.

The survey also suggested that future 5G Mobile services may technically be good enough to replace fixed line broadband and indeed many modern 4G operators can already offer faster data speeds than a lot older fixed line networks (location dependent). However 48% felt as if the limited data allowances of existing 4G plans were still the main obstacle to such a change.

Future 5G Mobile services may be good enough to replace fixed line broadband. Which aspects of service prevent 4G from doing this today?

Mark Jackson, ISPreview.co.uk's Editor-in-Chief, said: "The good news is that a growing number of ISPs, particularly cable, wireless and 'full fibre' (FTTH) providers, are now able to offer truly standalone home broadband connections (no phone). Meanwhile forthcoming solutions from national UK operator Openreach (BT) should enable the same possibility on traditional copper lines.

"The bad news is that anybody expecting to save money by purchasing a standalone broadband connection will be disappointed. In reality the cost of adding a voice (phone) component to an existing copper line is very small and ISPs may also need to recoup lost calling revenues from elsewhere. Put another way, simply cutting out the phone / voice side won't make much of a difference to the overall price you pay for broadband."